This morning Southern Water discharged raw sewage from outfalls in Shoreham and Southwick for two hours 27 minutes. Last week they did this from four combined sewage outfalls into the river Adur for five hours 35 minutes.
We need to hear plans from Southern Water on how thy are going to stop this. We need to see the Adur estuary or nearby beaches designated as bathing water. This would force the Environment Agency and Southern Water to act on cleaning up our river and beaches. Sewage is not good for bathers or windsurfers off our beaches, or people in canoes, kayaks or paddleboards on the Adur. Or for people who just want to spend time on our free-to-use beaches.
The Environment Agency, Southern Water and the council should be working together to reduce and end overflows from the sewage system, and assist Adur houseboats to link to the main sewer system.
In October 2021 the company discharged sewage from the outfall at the Ropetackle four times. In December Adur Labour councillors Cat Arnold and Jeremy Gardner called on the council’s ruling Conservative executive to write to Southern Water asking them to meet with the Council’s CEO to “lay out their plans for how they will remedy the situation”.
This week Conservative MPs called for action and Adur Conservative council leaders announced: “We will be writing to Southern Water to ask for a meeting as a priority to find out what action the company will be taking to prevent this happening again.” A priority? Taking eight months to write a letter?
Southern Water representatives attended a council scrutiny meeting early this year. This meeting passed a recommendation for the river Adur at Shoreham to be designated a clean bathing zone.
We hope this will be supported by the council’s leadership.
Our seas and rivers support our leisure, fishing industry and our busy port. Public health and businesses cannot be blatantly disregarded. Southern Water should not be rewarding these poor practices and the resulting threefold increase in serious incidents compared to 2020, with an £550,000 CEO bonus.
In Oct 2021 an amendment to the Environment Bill asked for a legal duty on water companies and the government to demonstrate progressive reductions in discharges of untreated sewage and to “take all reasonable steps” to avoid using combined sewer overflows, was rejected by government MPs in favour of a lighter touch amendment asking for “progressive reduction in the adverse harm” caused by sewage dumps.
We are at the mercy of profit focused water companies, whose main concern is their demanding shareholders, who have failed to invest in the infrastructure as promised, running their businesses on short returns, and to hell with the customers!
The government must act.
The picture was taken at a protest against sewage going into rivers at the Southern Water headquarters in Worthing last year.